Rocket Attacks By Hamas Leave One Israeli Dead
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 28, 2008
JERUSALEM, Feb. 27 -- An Israeli airstrike Wednesday evening destroyed the Interior Ministry building in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip just hours after fighters from the movement launched a barrage of rockets into southern Israel.
The Israeli strike on the ministry -- apparently unoccupied at the time -- capped a day of intensive operations from both sides of the Gaza boundary that killed at least 10 Palestinians as well as one Israeli in the southern town of Sderot.
Palestinian hospital officials in Gaza said the Israeli strike on the ministry killed a 6-month-old baby and injured more than 25 other people living in the densely populated neighborhood around it.
Earlier in the day, Israeli strikes killed at least nine Palestinians, including four civilians, officials in Gaza said.
Israeli military officials said the attacks were aimed at Palestinian gunmen in Gaza who fired more than 40 rockets into Israel over the course of the day. In an afternoon strike, an Israeli college student was killed when shrapnel hit him in the chest. He was the 14th Israeli in the past seven years to be killed inside Israel by the sort of crude Palestinian rockets known generically as Qassams, and the first since May.
Even before Hamas seized power in Gaza last June, the Israeli government was under pressure to stop the rocket fire from the strip. But small-scale ground incursions, artillery fire and severe restrictions on the flow of goods into Gaza have all failed to eliminate the rocket strikes.
Residents of Sderot, a working-class town of 20,000 that sits a few miles from Gaza's boundary, have demanded that the government do more to stop the rockets, even if it means a full-scale invasion of Gaza.
Israeli spokesman David Baker said Wednesday that the government would "take whatever steps are necessary to bring these attacks to an end."
"Israel is compelled to undertake defensive measures to prevent these repeated Qassam rocket barrages," Baker said. "We cannot allow a situation where our citizens are continuously hounded by terrorist rockets."
Hamas, an armed movement with a network of social services, has vowed to continue the attacks, saying it is carrying out legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. The Hamas charter calls for the creation of an Islamic state across territory that now includes Israel, although its military focus is to end the Israeli occupation of land taken in the 1967 Middle East war.
Gaza's 1.5 million people have been suffering in recent months from a tight economic embargo imposed by Israel that has limited the availability of basic supplies. The Israeli government evacuated its Gaza settlements in 2005 but still controls the cargo crossings between the strip and Israel.
"We have to resist in order to protect our land and our people and put an end to this occupation," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Barhoum said the airstrike on the Interior Ministry "is a message that everything inside Gaza is a target."
An opinion poll released Wednesday showed that a significant majority of Israelis -- 64 percent -- favor a cease-fire with Hamas. The group, which Israel considers a terrorist organization, has said it is willing to negotiate such a truce. The Israeli government has rejected the idea.
Previous opinion polls have shown that most Israelis would also favor an invasion of Gaza, if it would help stop the rockets.
The violence Wednesday began with an Israeli airstrike on a van transporting Hamas military trainers near the central Gazan city of Khan Younis, according to Palestinian and Israeli military sources. Five people were killed.
In the afternoon, Hamas began launching rockets. The deadly strike on the student came as he was walking in the parking lot of Sapir College. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene.
Another rocket hit a factory cafeteria just after the employees had left, and a third hit a house. Two people were injured in the strikes.
"The situation here is very tense. Rockets landed here for two hours without a break," said Michael Amsalam, a council member in Sderot. "It is a very unpleasant situation here today. There is a strong feeling of helplessness."
[Early Thursday in Japan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Hamas rocket attacks against Israel "need to stop," the Associated Press reported. She met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who also was visiting the country.]
At dusk, rockets also struck the Israeli city of Ashkelon, six miles north of Gaza, although they did not cause any injuries. One landed next to a hospital where the wounded in Sderot are often taken for treatment.
As the rockets streamed out of Gaza, Israeli forces attacked the rocket launchers. Palestinian hospital officials said four civilians were killed in those strikes, including two boys younger than 10 and a 17-year-old. The officials said the boys had gone to the scene where rockets were fired earlier in the day and may have been mistaken for fighters.
The Interior Ministry strike came late Wednesday and was accompanied by attacks on five other targets suspected of being sites for manufacturing rockets or for launching them, the Israeli military said.
In the West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday, a member of the armed wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement was killed in an undercover operation by the Israeli military. The man was being sought after recently escaping from prison.
Special correspondents Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem and Islam Abdulkarim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
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